against everyone's advice

Alice happens to exist much against everyone's advice, so sees no reason why she should take anyone's advice.

cloud

I am the cloud
on which
a dream has landed

secret

best dreams are --
kept secret

What happens to a dream deferred?

HARLEM
Langston Hughes


What happens to a dream deferred?


Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?


Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.


Or does it explode?

time

When one doesn't run, time passes slowly.

Take off your words they get in the way...

Narcissus

"Narcissus knew that he could never have himself. But if he'd had a photograph maybe his tragedy would have been avoided."

Vik Muniz, Mirrors; Or, 'How to Steal a Masterpiece'

düş: kurmacanın gerçeğe dokunduğu yer

düş: kurmacanın gerçeğe dokunduğu yer

düş bütünlüğün sağlandığı yer, geleceğin ve geçmişin birleştiği, renklerin aktığı, istemsiz imgelerin hareket ettiği uzam. iç ile dışın ayrılamadığı boyut.

düşlerimin berraklığı ve iletilerinin dolaysızlığı dehşete düşürüyor beni. nereden kopup geldiklerini bilmediğim imgeler başka bir dünyanın kaynağına açılıyor. kehanet, öngörü, yoğun bir yaşama arzusu.

saçmalık.

düş ben imgesinin sakatlandığı, kırıldığı yer. anlamın saçmalaştığı, arzunun sıvılaştığı, bilincin buharlaştığı, benlik ile dış arasındaki sınırların kalktığı enlem. düş, içinden dünyaya düşülen yer. asla geri dönülemeyen. her zaman farklı, her zaman yeni, her zaman şaşırtıcı, her zaman beklenmedik.

düşlerim kehanetimdir, ne olduğumun ve ne olacağımın kehanetleri. ne olmak istediğimin. ne olmak istemediğimin. ne olmaktan korktuğumun. ne olmaktan kaçındığımın. ne olmayı ertelediğimin. ne olamadığımın. olma hallerimi kurcaladığım ve kurguladığım boşluk.

düş olmadığım öbür yanlarımın toplamı. düş, yanlarımı her açıdan görebildiğim nokta.

Something

I am still amusing myself with the Lacanian definition of love:

Love is to give what you don't have, to someone who doesn't want.

more will come...

a beginning of writing?

"Love is mute, Novalis says; only poetry makes it speak. Song means nothing: it is in this that you will understand at last what it is that I give you; as useless as the whip of yarn, the pebble held out to his mother by his child."

"To know that one does not write for the other, to know that these things I am going to write will never cause me to be loved by the one I love (the other), to know that writing compensates for nothing, sublimates nothing, that it is precisely there where you are not --this is the beginning of writing."

Roland Barthes, from Fragments: A Lover's Discourse

Unuseful lists # 2

a to do list

• look out from the window until you count ten people passing your street
• learn the speeling of "procrastination"
• write a poem entitled "pair per tree"
• contemplate on whether it is possible at any moment to do nothing
  
• examine the petals of a caucus-like flower for at least ten minutes
• miss your street while walking back home, indeliberately
• make a shopping list of thing you would never want to buy
• make a "please no!" gift list, terminable
• make a list of possible responses to use in case you encounter relationship clichés such as "it's not you, it's me"
  

A long journey,
starts with a small step.

writing

I am sooo bored!
is writing an act of erasing,
or is it a disclosure?
why is the angst in all writing?
what do I fear?
what do I long for?

where do I write from?
where does the script come from?

izdüşüm

izdüşümlerin fotoğraflarını çekiyorum. yeniden görmek için, anımsamak için, düşleri, izleri düşenleri, düşen düşleri. unutmamak için. hayat dediğimiz şey hatırlamadan ve unutmadan ibaret.

hatırladıklarımız kadar hatırlamadıklarımız mıyız? hatırlamamayı seçebilir mi insan? seçerse unutabilir mi? ya hiç izi düşmeyenler? bir de, izsiz düşenler? hani, iz bırakmaksızın düşenler?

anlardan mı, insanlardan mı bahsediyorum? bellek için bir farkı yok. fotoğraf çekiyorum, anı dememek için.

dreaming father

Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939

the father of psychoanalysis, ouups! did I say "father"? Correcting: the genius who repudiated the legitimization of the "normal" upon human conduct, who by incorporating into human disposition explained away the "superstitious" and "irrational", and who, by this way, saved a place for the dreams on the stage by giving their worth. He was missing on this page from the beginning.

Love is a Sickness

LOVE is a sickness full of woes,
All remedies refusing;
A plant that with most cutting grows,
Most barren with best using.
Why so?

More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoy'd, it sighing cries—
Heigh ho!

Love is a torment of the mind,
A tempest everlasting;
And Jove hath made it of a kind
Not well, nor full nor fasting.
Why so?

More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoy'd, it sighing cries—
Heigh ho!
Samuel Daniel. 1562–1619

I wish I could post the song instead of the poem, because it is a song more than a poem for me, (I used to sing it), which portrays very well the perception of love as a sickness, but of the mind, on which a lot of Medieval scholars wrote treatises. They were trying to provide an analysis of its symptoms and suggest cures. And when they were calling it a sickness, they were not speaking metaphorically, No!; they were speaking of a sickness, just like any other sicknesses. For your enjoyment: "Questions on the Viaticum". The seriousness of their preoccupation and their explanations seem mostly funny from the point of view of our knowledge of medicine and human sciences. But I can't keep myself from asking: have we arrived at a better understanding? Have we moved any closer in explaining this feeling (or syndrome, depends on how you approach it)? Or, rather, have we gave up the effort of trying to give an account of it and left the concept (and the thing itself, I don't know what it is, this_thing_called_love) to be exhausted by the consumerism of advertisements and horoscopes? And, lastly, will there be an end to my rhetorical questions? And, loss of words, I sigh!

It has been only weeks since I wrote my autumn haiku, and now the time came for me to write one for the winter, for while I sit in my warm and softly lit room, it snows outside. But wait! The trees still have some green leaves. The trees still have green leaves.

These days I wonder which one is better: to dream during the sleep and be reminded of those left aside, swept under the rug in the light of the day; or better not to dream at all. But if everyone dreams, is it possible to choose not to remember? If dreams are gates to our hidden desires and fears, the things we would prefer not to be reminded, the judgments we flee to make, maybe the question is whether one wants to know or not. The curious thing with dreams is that one does not have the choice to decide on that. It is just there, right in one's face. What does it say? It says, "the more you run the more I'll come after you." It is like a psycho postman who is obsessed with getting his mails delivered to the right person by the hand. Ok. I got my mail. So what's next? I don't know.

unuseful lists # 2

çalışma zamanı
az konuş, çok iş yap.
araştır
başvur
karar ver
arzula
heyecanlan
üzerine git
vazgeç
geri dön
yeniden başla
yeniden heyecanlan
geri durma
hata yap
yanıl
hatalarını affet
sahip olduğun tek şeyi kucakla

gözle
seyret
öğren
coşkuyla izle
akışa katıl
merak et
izinden git
müziğe uy
seviş

az konuş, çok şey söyle
gözlerini kapa
düşle
düşlerini anımsa
öğrendiklerini unut
benliğini yık
ve sonra
ötekinin imgesinde
yeniden kur
aşk dediğin nedir ki?

Death of Distance

Günün ilk ışıklarıyla şarkılarına başlayacak olanlara imreniyorum. Yaşlı bir kuş gibi yüreğim, suskun. Neşenin parıltıları düşmüş kanadından. Şarkının ilk dizesini unutmuş, sonrasını getiremiyor. Kimbilir hangi havai fişeklerinden ürkmüş, ürktüğü için seyrine varamadığı.

Hiçbir yere gitmeksizin yürüyorum. Sokaklar belirsizce birbirine bağlanıyorlar, ağaran gökyüzü gece lambalarından sızan ışığı körleştiriyor. Tepeden aşağıya yılan gibi kıvrılarak inen dar sokağın son dönemecinde ıhlamur karşılıyor uzaktan, tüm geçmiş baharlarımı yüklenmiş. Bu bahar da geçmekte, havada asılı ıhlamur kokusu gibi.

Yollar birbirine bağlanarak uzanıp gidiyorlar önümde, mesafeyi kısaltmaksızın.

Mesafenin ölümü, neyin ölümü?
Mesafenin ölümü, neyin başlangıcı?

etcetera etcetera

if something interesting happens every day, it is generally a tiny, mundane, insignificant event, which can not even be called event. How miraculous they are! It is not the good things or happy coincidences, it is a bee visiting the newly blooming flower in pot, the shining sidewalks after a quick summer rain, and today, among many others, it is the baby seagulls beginning to practice timidly their unexperienced wings.
And how flat they become when they are told. However, most of the time it seems they are the things which count most; the etceteras we look down on, extraordinarily mundane, unadorned presences we disdain to share.